her portrait, too, was faded, as
faded as autumn leaves. He was very unhappy, and whenever he was very
unhappy he went to the piano, or took up his violin, as the case might
be....

This time he sat down at the piano, with a vague notion of playing the
sonata in E minor, Grieg's, of course, which had been her favourite, and
was the best and finest, in his opinion, after Beethoven's sonata in D
minor; not because E comes after D, but because it was so.

But the piano was very refractory to-day. It was out of tune, and made
all sorts of difficulties, so that he began to believe that his eyes
and fingers were in a bad temper. But it was not their fault. The piano,
quite simply, was out of tune, although a very clever tuner had only
just tuned it. It was like a piano bewitched, enchanted.

He seized his violin; he had to tune it, of course. But when he wanted
to tighten the E string, the screw refused to work. It had dried up; and
when the conductor tried to use force, the string snapped with a sharp
sound, and rolled itself up like a dried eel-skin.

It was bewitched!

But the fact that her photograph had faded was really the worst blow,
and therefore he threw a veil over the altar.

In doing this, he threw a veil over all that was most beautiful in his
life; and he became depressed, began to mope, and stopped going out in
the evening.

It would be Midsummer soon. The nights were shorter than the days, but
since the Venetian blinds kept his bedroom dark, the conductor did not
notice it.

At last, one night--it was Midsummer night--he awoke, because the clock
in the sitting-room struck thirteen. There was something uncanny about
this, firstly, because thirteen is an unlucky number, and secondly,
because no well-behaved clock can strike thirteen. He did not fall
asleep again, but he lay in his bed, listening. There was a peculiar
ticking noise in the sitting-room, and then a loud bang, as if a
piece of furniture had cracked. Directly afterwards he heard stealthy
footsteps, and then the clock began to strike again; and it struck and
struck, fifty times--a hundred times. It really was uncanny!

And now a luminous tuft shot into his bedroom and threw a figure on the
wall, a strange figure, something like a fylfot, and it came from the
sitting-room. There was a light, then, in the sitting-room? But who
had lit it? And there was a tinkling of glasses, just as if guests were
there; champagne glasses of cut-crystal; but